Pawlenty Ad in Iowa Targets Bachmann

Tim Pawlenty takes aim at fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann this week with his first radio ad in Iowa, highlighting his record of “results not rhetoric” as a conservative former governor who slowed the growth of spending and nominated conservatives justices to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Tim Pawlenty speaks about the economy at the University of Chicago on June 7, 2011. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The former Minnesota governor is scrambling to close a sizable gap with Ms. Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman, after the Des Moines Register’s first poll of likely Republican caucus-goers was released over the weekend.

Ms. Bachmann was the first choice of 22% of the respondents, right on the heels of the early front-runner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the first choice of 23%. She kicked off a three-state announcement tour Sunday night in her birthplace of Waterloo, Iowa, with a formal announcement today.

The radio ad highlights Mr. Pawlenty’s record as governor and argues he was able to transform a traditionally liberal state by reining in spending and pushing conservatives for the state Supreme Court. In the ad, Mr. Pawlenty also takes another shot at Mr. Romney for the Massachusetts health-care law he signed as governor that requires most Bay State residents to be insured — legislation that became a template for the national health-care law conservatives revile.

Mr. Pawlenty needs to make up ground in Iowa after a distant sixth-place finish in the Register poll. He brushed off those results on Monday in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show.

“These early polls aren’t very good predictors of how the race is going to come out. If they were, we would have Hillary Clinton as president,” he said. “Iowans decide late.”

As evidence, Mr. Pawlenty cited former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who was the first choice of only 4% of the likely caucus-goers in the first Register poll taken four years ago but went on to win the caucuses a few months later after surging in the fall.

To that end, Mr. Pawlenty said he is the only candidate in the field who appeals to “the whole conservative movement.”

“Most of the other candidates appeal primarily to one part of it,” he said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Pawlenty plans to give an address on foreign policy, laying out his vision for the U.S. strategt toward the

Middle East and North Africa at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is expected to challenge fellow Republicans to maintain a strong military and diplomatic presence overseas. Earlier this month, he talked about the economy in a lecture a the University of Chicago.

Here’s the script for the radio ad:

Announcer: Minnesota.

Not exactly a conservative place.

Then came Tim Pawlenty, widely recognized as the most conservative governor in Minnesota history.

Here’s Tim Pawlenty:

Pawlenty:When I ran for governor I said, look, we have to tell the truth, and the truth is, the liberal approach has failed our state.

Announcer: For decades, Minnesota spending had grown at twenty percent. Tim Pawlenty shrank that down to one percent, and cut spending in real terms for the first time in history.

But that’s not all.

Pawlenty did heath care reform the right way. No mandates. No takeovers.

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